The Strange and Radical New World of 3-D Printed Body Parts

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The Strange and Radical New World of 3-D Printed Body Parts

Katie Scott

A few years ago, if a horrific infection ate your jawbone, doctors had to build makeshift mandibles from your fibula, a process that left you sliced open as surgeons painstakingly whittled away at replacement bone. Yech.

Today they can just hit Control-P: Based on MRI and CT scans of your busted-up body parts, hyperspecialized 3-D printers produce custom replacements, no sculpture skills required. As biomedical engineer Scott Hollister says: “We don't all have to be Michelangelos anymore.” And in October, engineers, medical device makers, and doctors will meet at the FDA in Maryland to discuss regulations for an industry that's growing—one printable bone at a time.

1 | Cranial Plate

In 2013, Oxford Performance Materials createda new skull for a man who had lost 75 percent of his cranium. The material, polyetherketoneketone, encourages bone growth.

2 | Jawbone

An 83-year-old woman in the Netherlands had an infection in her jaw, but her age meant a 15-hour replacement surgery would be risky. So in 2011, a company called Xilloc printed her a new jaw out of laser-sintered titanium dust. Installation time: four hours.

3 | Spinal Cage

In France this summer, Medicrea made a “spinal cage” for a patient with a deformed spine. The new disk fit perfectly between the two affected vertebrae.

4 | Tracheal Splint

When an Ohio infant had problems with his windpipe in 2012, the University of Michigan printed a special supertiny tube to keep his airways open.

5 | Shoulder Joint

A Belgian woman had lost bone in her shoulder this year. Mobelife engineers mapped the area to craft an implant that would fit the joint and not require removing any additional bone.

6 | Hip Joint

A congenital disease had eroded a Swedish teenager's hip. In 2012 an implant based on CT scans of the affected area, also by Mobelife, got her walking again.